Episode 28 In The Shadow Of The Mountain C.L.Knox Stories

The speaker reminisces about their experiences following the Grateful Dead in the 1970s. They describe attending concerts where they took various drugs and felt a spiritual connection with the band. They also discuss how their involvement in the counterculture movement influenced their beliefs and views on spirituality. They touch on the fragmentation of society and the lack of moral consensus in today's world. The speaker mentions their Christian faith and the challenges of expressing their beliefs in a judgmental and increasingly hostile environment. We are on to episode 28, and then go back to San Francisco Bay Area in 1970. I spent a lot of time in Berkeley and San Francisco, more than probably anywhere, for continuous time. In 1970 when I was hitchhiking up and down the coast of California with with Hoagie. So I was 12. We were basically following the Grateful Dead. If they were in Los Angeles, we would make a trip to Los Angeles or San Diego or wherever. That was our main focus, was taking in the Grateful Dead. And also we saw Jetson Airplane probably three or four times. It seems like twice they were playing with the Grateful Dead. I talked about the one in Los Angeles already. This particular thing I'm thinking about is right before Hoagie and I hitchhiked up to Seattle to meet my folks with Vicki and Jonathan. We went to, it seems like there was three concerts of the Grateful Dead. They were consecutive nights and we went, I think there was four nights all together, and we went three nights. I think that's that's what it was. And it was at Fillmore West, which has become a very famous, the Grateful Dead played there quite a bit. So we went and saw them. The first night was amazing. Again, we took LSD and we went to this show. In my memory, we took drugs all three nights. And I can't remember, it seems like the first night we took LSD. There was one night we took psilocybin and it was a processed psilocybin. It wasn't like raw mushrooms. It was a different kind of a high, a different kind of a stone from just eating mushrooms. It was quite a bit more intense. And it seems like one night we may have taken mescaline one night too, but maybe we did psilocybin. I can't remember. I mean, it's all just a blur really. It all seems like one trip to me. So when we went, it's a smaller venue than other places we had seen. Although there was another place we went, and I can't remember what it was called, and it was in the Bay Area. And it was probably April, after my birthday, that we went and saw them with New Riders of Purple Sage and Grateful Dead. It seems like there was a couple of three bands. And I remember New Riders of Purple Sage because that was Jerry Garcia's other band, or one of his other bands. That was a pretty neat concert too. But the one I'm talking about is Fillmore West. And the experience was very intimate. It's like everybody there was stone on acid and everybody was experiencing the same thing. Just like the big venue in Los Angeles. Though this one was way more intimate. I felt like I had already experienced the Los Angeles concert, and I felt like I was intimately connected to this band. In particular, Jerry Garcia. And I think there's a lot of people that have those kinds of experiences with the Grateful Dead. That's why there's so many deadheads. This particular instance, again, I just felt like I was on the same wavelength as the band and just connected with them. The songs that they sang. I remember Dark Star, which was one of my favorite songs, just because it went forever. It went for a long time. There was an album that they put out before, an electric album that they put out before The Working Man's Dead, which was called Live Dead. And it had, I think it was a double, yeah it was a double. This experience was, I'm gonna say spiritual. It sort of ties into a lot of the things that we're seeing in our world today, and this whole spiritual, this idea of spiritual. People are, you know, on a different level. They believe that they are connecting with all of the spirits of teachers that came before, including Christ and Buddha and Krishna and everybody, right? Plus aliens. And this is called spiritualism today. It's a bizarre kind of a homemade or made-up psychedelic belief system. That's my opinion, okay? And I believe that I was at that time experiencing that. And my belief now is that it was probably influenced by demonic activity. The second night of the concert, I remember sitting back. The first night I was up in the front, like right up in the front. The second night I was back in in the back, sitting beside. My memory is that I was actually talking to, interfacing with the people that were doing the light show. Sort of getting to know them. It was a woman. It seems like there was a man there too, but it was the woman I was more talking to and interfacing with. Again, there was a connection with the band, but it extended out to being also a connection with the entourage. And I mean, again, if you read or have looked at the book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, there was an entourage. There was this group of people that traveled together. Now, that was before the 70s, but I think the idea continued. I don't remember anything specific about, say, the third night. They all kind of blended together. I believe I was up in the front again. It was like we were all just one big family. Like, I don't know if the same people were there all three nights. I know we were there at least three nights. We may have gone four nights. I think it was a four-night deal, and we went three nights, if that's my memory. But there's things about that that imprinted me, that that stayed with me. And still, to this day, sometimes I'll flash back on that, all the drugs and the music and the influence that it played in my life. As I got older and began playing music myself, it was a connection to the music. Like, playing music was a connection to things spiritual, even though I wouldn't have maybe... I would have identified it as that, because we were doing I Ching and tarot cards and, you know, stuff like that. We were doing mystical stuff like that. Now, after I became a Christian, I realized that there is a sect or an understanding of Christian mystics. And I'm not sure how I feel about that now. At one point, I embraced the whole Christian mysticism, Christian mystics. And to this day, I think I might have some leanings towards that. The problem is, is that I believe that there is one way, and that way is through Jesus Christ, you know. And I've said that a lot. And then, as I interface with people today, there's a lot of this spiritualism stuff happening. There's a lot of Eastern mysticism, and there's a lot of Eastern religions that have permeated our culture. So, consequently, as a result of the 60s, I'm gonna say the 60s. I'm gonna say there was a pivotal moment in our cultural history and in our cultural makeup that took place in the 60s. And the first thing was the sexual revolution. So, as the sexual revolution happened, as the pill became more and more readily available, and sex became...it had always been, for many people, recreational. But it became, if not acceptable, it became more attainable as the pill gained popularity and became available to the public. It changed the way that we view sex. It changed the way that we view intimate relationships. And, like I said, always, I mean, Rome, Greece, always, there's always been use of sex as a recreational pastime. I think it's more than that. I've mentioned that before. I don't particularly want to go into that. It's more the mystical mysticism thing. There's a couple of people that I associate with on Facebook. I mean, they're not deep, close, personal friends. But I have connection with them on Facebook and Instagram. They call themselves spiritual, right? Spiritualist or spiritual. And they constantly, or often, are posting things that I find abrasive. It's mostly because, like, last time I mentioned that mentality of a supermarket or a shopping mall or whatever, where you go and there's a supermarket of ideas and you pick what you want and you build your own belief system. Now, for people who have pushed hard and actually strive for liberty and freedom, and basically that has a tendency to produce autonomous belief systems, you know, it makes sense to pick and choose what you want and what you want to believe and what's true for you and those terms that are popular now. But what it does for a culture and for society is it fragments it, it breaks it up, and it takes us towards anarchy. Because there is no consensus. There is no, there's no more moral consensus. There's no more ethical consensus. There's no more consensus of what is right and what is wrong. Like, again, I believe that we know intrinsically, internally, I believe that we know what's right and what's wrong. And I believe that people deaden that, they dull it in their own consciousness, their conscience, they let it become scarred by pushing away what they know is right and wrong. Again, because of my belief is the Bible is pretty clear that God made us this way. He gave us an intrinsic understanding of right and wrong. It's written on our hearts. We're created in his image. So as people cast off restraint and move towards fulfilling their physical desires, their fleshly desires, their mental desires, their spiritual desires, their desire for power and money, their desire for, you know, whatever it is, it's an autonomous understanding of, or an autonomous way of living and behaving. And that's, you know, I'm all for liberty and freedom, but I also understand that with liberty and freedom comes this ability to make one independent of the cultural body or the societal body. So that's where we are today. I mean, the whole Western world, but not just the Western world, the whole world is going through this transition of fragmentation that we don't, we can't, there's very little that adheres us together, that pulls us together. So that's one of the things that Jesus said, by your love for each other they will know that you are mine and that you are my true church. By your love for the way that you love one another. And that's a difficult thing in the world we live in. How do you communicate? How do you share your belief systems? There's so much judgment. And I mean, the world is moving to prosecute and persecute. Christians, like, literally prosecute. In Canada it's really bad right now. Like, the police are squashing Christian gatherings, gatherings of people that claim Christianity as their faith. And yet they're allowing the Islam and Muslim faiths to wreak havoc in the cities and doing nothing to stop them. Although that's not 100% true, but 90% true. These protests go on and nothing happens. So this is the political realm. I get pulled into this and I get angry and I get separated from my faith. Now, in the world, these people that seek spiritual fulfillment, spiritual fulfillment, not the life of Christ, not the life of the one true God, but spiritual fulfillment, power, and those kind of things, there's a sense that they're looking for happiness, right? And that's what we're looking for, happiness. Now, Christ never talked about happiness. He never, he never, I don't recall him ever talking about happy is the man that does this or that or the other thing, content. Maybe, maybe he used that word occasionally, but that's not, that wasn't his goal. His goal was peace. His goal was establishing relationship with the one true God. And that gives one peace. So peace in whatever situation you're in, to be established in peace. And like for me, whenever I pray, I almost always end my prayer in asking for peace, praying that my, and I mean, I would love world peace and I pray for the peace of Jerusalem as we're required to do or told to do. But I'm talking about inner peace, like having this, this rock inside of me, this thing that holds me, this, this peace. And in scripture, New Testament, Old Testament, Daniel, Ezekiel, Revelation, Jesus himself, there's so much talk about the last days. And I keep bringing it up because as I look at the world and the fragmented world that we live in now, the world that's moving towards anarchy, the free world that is being destroyed, led into, to anarchy and being forced, forced submission to the dominant powers, dominant world powers. That's all stuff that a Christian who reads the Bible should be expecting because it was prophesied that this would happen in the last days. Now it could be a wave because there's also talk about it being like, like a woman giving birth, like it comes and then it recedes and then it comes and it recedes, like the birth pangs. So it could be just another wave, but it's just the, the waves are getting so much more intense now as we move through our lives and we look at the situation that the planet is in and the situation that our, our governments are in and the division and the, the, the, the hatred, the animus that, that is the verbal attacks and, and that are coming from all sides. It's not right and wrong. It's, it's, it's just people desiring power, desiring wealth, desiring control. I think there is perhaps one side that's better than another side and for those that know me, they know I'm conservative in my beliefs and it goes back to my belief in true Christianity. But I also think there's a lot of things on the liberal side or the left side that are valuable for culture to take care of the poor. I don't think they do it effectively. I think their methods are perverted and corrupted and, you know, if I, if I step back and look at conservative ideas, I would have to say the same because we are a corrupt people. We are corrupt in ourselves and we are corrupt corporately and we corrupt, you know, we are corrupted, you know, so there is in the, in the reading of Scripture, there is one thing I wanted to say. I might have mentioned it once before. Jude, Jude was one of the half-brothers of Jesus and he wrote a short little letter and it comes right before Revelation in the New Testament, if you're reading the New Testament. He starts off, you know, talking about the history of humanity, basically the history of Israel and how we move towards sin and corruption and from there it goes into, he actually gets to the point where he's like, I'll read it. You must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, in the last time there will be scoffers following after their own ungodly passions. I was talking about that. It is these who cause divisions, worldly people devoid of the Spirit, but you, beloved, building yourselves up in the most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Christ that leads to eternal life. Have mercy on those who doubt and save others by snatching them from the fire and to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garments stained by their flesh. There's this idea of snatching someone from the fire and I've tried it. People that I knew that had at one point expressed their belief in Christ and I've tried to be strong with them and say, look, you're heading to, because they've gone off to other things, they've sought this spiritualism idea. I'm bringing it up specifically because of something that, two things that I've seen recently and that is people that put words into Christ's mouth, they take one little piece of Scripture and then they build their own belief system on that without looking at the whole picture of who Jesus was and prophetically who he claimed to be and how he attached himself to Old Testament prophetic ideas or utterances and they build this Christ out of thin air. They build this belief system to support their belief that they are in touch with, they're connecting with the aliens and they're reaching back and in touch with the spirit of Buddha and Krishna and Jesus. These men taught different things. They didn't teach the same thing. It's ridiculous to think that they're all of the same spirit. They're not. Of all of them, Jesus was the only one who ever said he was God. He said he was the Son of God. He acknowledged that he was the Son of Man. There's so many ways that he said he was God. He was the Savior. He was the way. So those are things that I can talk about, but the snatching from the fire, I don't know how you do it. It's by the Spirit, obviously. I've been personally not very effective in doing that, but even this, like all of this, I don't know what you know. You're listening to me. You may have turned the video off as I started to talk about spiritual things and society and stuff like that. The fact of the matter is that there's this call. There's this call for all of us and my prayer is that you heed the call and turn your eyes upon Jesus and believe. This is all you need, really. It's all you need is to understand who he is and enter into a relationship with him. It's not a formula. It's just a doing. I always am going to come back to this idea of Christ. It is what is central in my life. I have a lot of relationships where I don't get to talk about Christ, or very little. I just touch on it. I'm not trying to push anything. I'm just trying to explain what I believe and how I got there. Anyway, that's 28. It seems to go pretty fast. Once I start talking, I'll edit it down and hopefully you got something out of it. Okay, 28 and the next one is 29 and then the one after that is 30. So anyway, next time. Love comes in different shades and colors. Love comes in many different shades and colors, yeah. It is a Bible that binds our very being. It's what makes mankind a higher form. Not just emotion which is whimsical. Not just a feeling which can come and go. When a man says he loves a woman, he wants that woman to stay by his side. He'll leave the home which he has grown up in and take that woman to be his bride. Together they will start a life of their own. Together they become one. And this is love. Love comes in different shades and colors. Love comes in different shades and colors. It's not just a game we play. No, it's more than that. Much more than that. If it's real, it can change your life. If love is real, it will change your life. When a woman holds her baby in her arms and she rocks that child, he goes fast asleep. He trusts his mama to give him what he needs. Yeah, the woman shall do her best for you. Because the child is precious in her eyes. Because the two of them are bound in love. Love comes in different shades and colors. Love comes in many different shades and colors. Love comes in different shades and colors. Yeah, love comes in different shades and colors. When a man will lay his life down for another, this is love of the highest kind. There is a man who did this for you and me. He gave his life so we could live victoriously. He's the son of God, the true creator. He came, he lived, he died, he rose again. If love's not a game to play, it's much more than that. Much more than that. It's life or death or victory. The choice is yours, live victoriously. It's life or death, defeat or victory. The choice is yours, live victoriously.